Most Helpful Customer Reviews

I like the way amazon has been putting these classical collections together--they seem fun with a massive amount of money for a couple of dollars. The recordings are high quality and I certainly have nothing bad to say about the distinguished fistful of composers they've brought together here.

That said, I'd like a quick word with whoever made the selections here, as we clearly have very different ideas of what is sensual.

Your first instinct comes from the album cover. What appears to be a nude woman shaped like a cello (which is more attractive than such a description would initially suggest). Classy and sexy--well done! Start us off with Offenbach's Barcarole, and we're getting along nicely. Things get a tad awkward at the Habanera from Carmen, but we make due. Tchaikovsky's isn't exactly what I'd call 'sensual', but it isn't jarring.

It isn't until the grandiose, thumping climax of Bolero that you have to wonder if someone isn't asleep at the wheel here. Again, these are all exquisite pieces of music, but the operative word promised here was 'sensual'. Things get back to sorts with the cascading tenderness of pieces like The Swan and Claire de Lune's Moonlight, but then they wheel out the freaking Sabre Dance, a song scientifically proven to be as romantic and sensual as a dog riding a unicycle. You're delicately running your hands down the small of a woman's back and suddenly you expect to see a man spinning plates in the corner of your bedroom.

This is a tremendous collection of music--please don't misunderstand me. And for two dollars I'm thrilled to own so much grandeur. But perhaps a more general title was in order before sensuality was promised. My suggestion? "66 Randomly Selected Classics". It might not be as exciting, but it isn't false advertising.

I downloaded this classical collection to add to my Kindle Fire. There is an excellent variety of classical music, absolutely first rate: good, clean recording, well chosen titles, and the perfect background with earbuds to reading a book on the Fire, feet up, completely relaxed.

This is an excellent assortment of 66 more-sprightly renditions of classics. These songs are easy on the ears and are great for relaxing in your home with a stiff drink or for setting in the background during a long drive. These are NOT songs that are going to "heat things up" so to speak; remember, this is classical music. This is, however, a lively mix and one that you'll never regret spending $0.99 on when this album goes on sale.

I picked this up while Amazon had it up as part of their free albums (and it's still free at the time of writing), so grabbed this along with a bunch of more compact items. What you get for your download time is 500Mb of assorted classical pieces performed by a broad variety of ensembles, many of of them probably hailing from the el cheapo classical CDs of the 1980s and 1990s. The main reason for having a collection like this is to have something handy that's good for background without having to think about putting together a playlist, or throwing a random pile of things into a media player and putting it on shuffle.

I've started picking up these collections as I go on, free or cheap, and I'm content with them. They're nice to use when hitting the hay, certainly, and the individual tracks usually can stand close listening.

Not a great collection, but good enough for the price. I deleted a handful of tracks from my iTunes library because they seemed out of place and some even quite annoying in a so-called sensual collection. I couldn't possibly call the frenetic Sabre Dance sensual, nor is the jarring rendition of Bolero (if you want to hear a lovely and unique recording of that one, check out Pink Martini's.) Greensleeves, La Vie Parisienne Overture, and Easy Blood Polka, Op.319 also just didn't really work in the theme, not that they're unpleasant pieces of music, but they just don't mesh. Greensleeves is a little hokey at this point. That piece makes me think of any cheesy sitcom in which characters visit a Ren Faire and the writers have never been to one, Greensleeves is invariably what they'll play. It has become lazy TV writer's shorthand for "We are at a Ren Faire now." As for La Vie Parisienne, well, overtures are just too grand for the theme of the compilation. Wine, Women, and Song is also just too big for it. Easy Blood is an okay piece of music, but polkas are not at all romantic. There are a few others that had to go as well. Some other pieces are little clichéd, but certainly likeable enough to keep. A few pleasantly took me by surprise. For example, most recordings of Moonlight Sonata usually sound very sad, this one comes off as more relaxing.After all, I'd say it is worth the few bucks they charge for it. I have it on frequently for background noise.